All quarters of the City open into the Main Square. The Magi who supposedly built this city had a reverence for stark geometry. The streets are precise, grid-like, the width proportional to the density of buildings. Each quarter is a perfect square with hundreds of squared blocks embedded within it. At the heart of the City is the Main Square, an open plaza paved with long slabs of stones intricately fitted in a dazzling fractal. Seen from above it is something almost religious in nature. Seen from the ground, especially when the Square is somewhat empty, it can be disorienting and dizzying, the way going down a very long, unbroken flight of stairs can be. The Square is the seat of City government: the courthouse takes up much of one side, and Sanctuary takes up another. Next to Sanctuary is a Qin temple. The City Library—a building of stark and incomparable beauty—overshadows the entire city on the Square’s northern edge. The City Library has a timelessness woven into its stonework. It is a building that I found overwhelming in its size and perfection. Every angle is exactly 90 degrees. Every face of stone is exactly smooth, down to the last infinitesimal speck.

All the grandeur of the Square is undone by the shambling building struggling to stay upright on the south side. It is a patched thing, with walls made of hunks of wood, sheets coated in dried mud, anything that could be nailed to the failing bones of the building. Parts of the structure were still stone, but much of the original walls now lie around the house in crumbled boulders of varying sizes. The roof sagged heavily on one side. A set of platforms had been secured with some bare competence to the outside of one of the sturdier walls. A pair of very thin youths sat on it, smoking and peering out at the falling night. I could feel them watching us as we crossed the Square. This building had a defiance to it, a willful sense of survival, like it dared the stately institutions in the rest of the Square to knock it down. Abira grinned wide when she saw it, and I knew this had been her home. She and the shambling, careless building had the same spirit.

When we were halfway across the Square, one of the youths on the makeshift balcony stood up. The way the light fell cast him as a silhouette, an empty spot of black. He whistled. The sound was piercing, sharp, and carried through the Square, which grew steadily emptier as the sun set. Abira laughed and waved her arms. Beside me, Dirva sighed. There was an electric tension in him. He took Abira’s elbow and drew her over. “I’m going to Da. Can you get Ariah settled?”

“C’mon, you’re not going to see them?”

“I’ll see them,” he said. “Just not tonight. Can you get him settled?”